Going Gray, Getting Real

What Your Hair Tells Your Doctor

According
to a study of 20,000 men and women in the Copenhagen City Heart Study,
neither baldness nor grayness are linked to premature death.

The
study, which followed the 20,000 participants over three years, found
"no correlation between the mortality and the extent of graying of the
hair or baldness or facial wrinkles in either of the sexes,
irrespective of age."

Whew!

But even though this big
random study indicates that having gray hair doesn't mean a person will
die earlier, there is a risk associated with having prematurely gray
hair. Dr. Lawrence Wood, the head of the Thyroid Foundation of America,
recommends that women who start going gray before the age of 30 should
be checked for a variety of auto-immune disorders. According to Wood,
"juvenile (Type 1) diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis,
colitis and hypothyroidism are all conditions that may track with
premature graying."

The thyroid, a gland just below the Adam's
apple, produces a hormone that is essential for the muscles, organs and
brain to function properly. Hypothyroidism, a condition created when
the gland produces too little of the hormone, can cause a wide range of
symptoms: fatigue, depression, and even high cholesterol.

I
wish I had known this when I developed hypothyroidism about six years
ago. I felt blue, like I was "under water," and began to gain
weight. But it took a while to diagnose my condition - those symptoms
are also the same as normal signs of aging.

Had I known that
starting to go gray in one's 20s - as I did - is a signal to pay closer
attention for the onset of auto-immune diseases, I certainly would have
been more vocal in letting my doctors know that beneath my dyed hair I
was gray.

Once I was diagnosed, I saw an endocrinologist who
was emphatic in his support for checking thyroid function early -
particularly in childbearing years.

Left untreated,
hypothyroidism can lead to miscarriage, premature birth and
pre-eclampsia. So regardless of whether you color your hair, do let
your doctor know if you're gray underneath the dye, and when you
started going gray.

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